He went over to the window, looked out, then closed it. But he did not light the table lamp. Instead he spoke to me in the darkness.
“Why won’t you look at me?” he asked.
And when I did not answer, he went on in the murk, his voice farther away now.
“If you really are so absolutely convinced, why won’t you look at me? I have no kind of power over you. I have no rights. And yet there is nothing you can do against me. You can accuse me of anything you like, but you must know that you are the only person in the world before whom I am innocent. And there came a day, and it was I who returned. Do you still believe in words like ‘pride’? Between people who are bound to each other by fate there is no pride. You will come with us. We will arrange everything. What will happen? We will live. Maybe life still has something in store for us. We will live quietly. The world has forgotten all about me. You will live there with me, with us. There’s no other way,” he said aloud, exasperated, as though he had finally understood and grasped something, something so simple, so blindingly obvious, that he resented arguing about it. “There’s nothing else I want from you except that just this once, for the last time in your life, you should obey the law that is the meaning and the content of your life.”
I could hardly see in the dark by now.
“Do you understand?” he asked, his voice quiet, coming at me from a long distance. It was as if he were talking to me out of the past.
“Yes,” I said involuntarily, almost in a trance.
That was the moment the curious numbness started, the kind sleepwalkers must feel when setting out on their dangerous course; I understood everything that was happening around me, I was fully aware of what I was doing and saying, I saw people clearly, as well as those parts of their souls that manner and custom tend to draw a veil over, but knew at the same time that whatever I was doing so sensibly and so firm of purpose was to some degree unconscious, that it was partly a dream. I was calm, almost good-humored. I felt light, without a care. There was indeed something I understood that moment in Lajos’s words, something stronger, more rational, more compelling than anything else, something over and above his charge against me. Naturally, I did not believe a word he said, but my skepticism amused me. While Lajos was speaking I understood something, the simple, assuring truth of which I could not have articulated in words. He was lying again, of course…I didn’t quite know in what way or in what respect, but he was lying. Maybe it wasn’t even his words or feelings that had lied, it might have been just his very being, the fact that he, Lajos, could not do anything else, not before and not now. Suddenly I was aware of myself laughing; I had burst into laughter, not a mocking laughter but a sincere, good-humored laughter. Lajos did not understand why I was laughing.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked suspiciously.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Do please carry on.”
“Do you agree?”
“Yes,” I said. “To what? No, of course I agree,” I quickly added.
“Good,” he said. “In that case…Now look, Esther, you mustn’t believe that anyone is against you or wishes you harm. We have to arrange our affairs as simply and as honorably as we can. You are coming with me. Nunu too…maybe not straightaway…a little later. Éva gets married. We have to redeem her,” he said more quietly, as though we were plotting. “And me too…You can’t understand it all yet…But do you trust me?” he asked uncertainly, his voice quiet.
“Carry on,” I answered, just as quietly, joining the air of conspiracy. “Of course I trust you.”
“That’s most important,” he muttered with satisfaction. “Don’t think,” he added more loudly, “that I will betray your trust. I don’t want you to make a decision right away. There are just the two of us here. I’ll go and call Endre. He is a family friend, a notary, with an official role. You should sign it in his presence,” he declared with a large gesture.
“Sign what?” I asked him in the same conspiratorial tone, like someone who has agreed and volunteered for a task and is merely inquiring after details.
“This piece of paper,” he said. “This contract that authorizes us to arrange everything and to have you come and live with us.”
“With you?” I asked.
“With us,” he said uncomfortably. “With us…Near us.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Before you call Endre…before I sign…Just clear up one matter for me. You want me to leave everything and go with you. I understand that much. But what happens after that? Where, near you, will I be living?”
“What we were thinking,” he said slowly, turning the matter over in his mind as if it were perfectly normal, “was that it would be somewhere near us. Our apartment, unfortunately, is not suitable…But there is a home there where lonely ladies of a certain standing…It’s quite close. And we could see each other often,” he added generously, as if to encourage me.
“A sort of workhouse, I imagine?” I asked, perfectly calm.
“A workhouse?” he replied, wounded. “What an idea! A home, I said, with ladies of good upbringing. People like you and Nunu.”
“Like me and Nunu,” I said.
He waited a while longer. Then he went over to the table, found a match, and lit the table lamp with clumsy, unpracticed movements.
“Think it over,” he said. “Think, Esther. I’ll send Endre in. Think hard. And read the contract before signing it. Read it very carefully.”
He produced a sheet of paper folded into four from his pocket and placed it modestly on the table. He looked me over one more time with a friendly encouraging smile, gave a little bow, and, sprightly as a young man, turned and left the room.
19
By the time Endre entered a few minutes later I had signed the contract that empowered Lajos to sell the house and garden. It was a proper contract, full of the proper terms, the text entirely composed of professional-sounding phrases, exactly like wills and marriages. Lajos had titled it “A two-party contract.” I was one of the parties, Lajos the other, who in return for the rights to the estate comprising both house and garden contracted himself to look after Nunu and me. The details of the “looking after” were not indicated.
“Lajos has told me everything,” said Endre once we had sat down, face-to-face, at the round table. “It is my duty to warn you, Esther, that Lajos is a scoundrel.”
“Yes,” I said.
“It is my duty to warn you that the terms and intentions of the contract he has sprung on you are dangerous and would be so even if Lajos followed those terms to the letter. You two, dear Esther, thanks to Nunu and the garden, have enjoyed a modest but stable existence here, and Lajos’s plans sound, to a stranger’s ear at least, a little sentimental…But I have no faith in Lajos’s sentiments. I have known him, and known him well, for twenty-five years. Lajos is the sort of man, the sort of character, who does not change.”
“No,” I said. “He himself says he does not change.”
“He says it too?” asked Endre. He took off his glasses and looked at me with his myopic eyes, blinking rapidly and clearly confused. “It doesn’t matter what he says. He was sincere just now? Deeply sincere? It means nothing. I have had many sincere meetings with Lajos. Twenty years ago, if you recollect, Esther…for twenty years I have kept this quiet. But now is the time to tell you—twenty years ago when old Gábor, your father, dear Esther…forgive me, he was a good friend, a really close friend…in other words, twenty years ago when your father died and it fell to me, as his friend and the local notary, to conduct the bitter task of sorting out your estate, it turned out that Lajos had faked certain bills in the old man’s name. Did you know about this?”
“Vaguely,” I said. “There was some talk. But nothing was proved.”
“But the point is that it could have been proved,” he said and wiped his glasses. I had never seen him so confused. “There was documentary evidence to prove that Lajos had faked the bills. If we hadn’t looked to it properly this house and this ga
rden would not have remained yours, dear Esther. Now I can tell you. It was no easy matter…Enough to say I endured a ‘sincere’ interview with Lajos. I remember it very clearly, since it wasn’t the kind of scene one is ever likely to forget. I repeat: Lajos is a scoundrel. I was the only one among you who did not fall under his spell. He knows that, he knows it very well…He is afraid of me. Now, when he breaks in on you and, to all intents and purposes, seems determined to rob you of everything that remains, to rob this modest little island with its crew of shipwrecked castaways of their peace and tranquility, it is my duty to warn you that that is the case. It is true that Lajos works more carefully now. He does not use bills. He seems to have been cornered somehow and can think of no other way of getting out but to come here to say good-bye and rob you of everything you have left…If you do sign over the house and garden to him there will be nothing I can officially do for you. Nobody can anyway. I alone could…that is, if you wanted me to.”
“What can you do, Endre?” I asked, astonished.
He bent his head and gazed at his clumsy button-up shoes.
“Well, I…” he began, clearly embarrassed and reluctant. “You must know that at that time I was foolish and saved Lajos. I saved him from prison. How? It doesn’t matter anymore. The bills had to be paid so you could remain in the house…It wasn’t Lajos I wanted to save. Suffice to say the bills were paid. And you stayed here in peace without having to worry. I let Lajos run free. But the bills, all the evidence of the crime, I put away and kept. As far as the law is concerned the evidence is no longer valid. But Lajos knows that though he has escaped the clutches of the law he is still in my power. I beg you, dear Esther,” he said almost ceremonially, and stood up, “empower me to talk to Lajos, to give him back this…this sheet of paper…and to send his people on their way. They would go if I insisted. Believe me,” he said with satisfaction.
“I believe you,” I said.
“In that case…” he said decisively and made to move.
“I believe you,” I said quickly, with a catch in my throat. I knew that this was beyond Endre’s understanding, that he could never resign himself to it, never really grasp it. “And I am most grateful…It is only now that I understand, and I am in no position to thank you. But that means that everything, everything that remained after Father’s death, is ours thanks to you, dear Endre? If not for you, twenty years ago…then there would be no house, no garden, nothing. And everything would have been different, including my life…I would have had to live elsewhere, in some unknown place…Is that so?”
“Not entirely,” he said, embarrassed. “It was not just me alone…Perhaps I can really tell you now. Tibor forbade me mentioning it before. He helped too. As an old friend of Gábor’s he was only too happy and keen to help. We were all part of this…” he said, clearly in agonies, very quietly, his face red.
“Oh, Tibor,” I said, and gave a nervous laugh. “So that’s how it is. One lives in ignorance, not knowing that something bad, nor that something very good, has happened to one. It is impossible to render proper thanks for this. But it is even more difficult…”
“To send Lajos away?” he asked, looking serious.
“To send Lajos away,” I mechanically repeated. “Yes, it will be very difficult now. He, of course, will leave immediately with his children and those strangers. They will soon set off, since they want to leave while it’s light. Lajos will go. But the house and the garden…well, yes, I have given it all to him. I have signed this piece of paper…and I ask you, Endre, to talk to him and persuade him to look after Nunu. That is the one thing he must promise to do. You are right, of course, his promise is not worth anything, so this must be arranged in a proper legal manner, through some official contract, but a contract that will hold…He must reserve a proportion of the sale price for Nunu. She will not need very much now, poor thing. Can that be done?”
“Yes,” he said. “We can do all that. But what about you, Esther? What will become of you?”
“Indeed. What will become of me? That’s the whole point,” I said. “Lajos suggested that I should leave this house and live somewhere near him…Not precisely with him…He did not go into detail about this. But that’s not the important thing,” I quickly said, seeing Endre frowning and raising his hand as if to interrupt me. “I want to explain this to you, Endre, to you and to Tibor, and to Laci as well, to all of you who have been so kind to us…I don’t need to explain to Nunu, she understands…she is perhaps the only one who does in the end understand how everything must be done today precisely as it was twenty years ago. I think she might understand. I think only a woman could really understand this, the kind of woman who is no longer young and no longer expects anything from life…A woman like Nunu. A woman like me.”
“I don’t understand,” he grumbled.
“I don’t want you to understand,” I said, and would have liked to hold his hand or touch his old gray-bearded face, that sad, wise, male face, a man’s face, with my fingertips. I wanted to touch a man who had never pressed himself on me but whom I had to thank for twenty years of decent, honorable, humane life.
“You are a man, Endre, a splendid, true man, and are therefore obliged always to think rationally, the way the law or custom or reason wisely dictate. But we, we women, cannot be wise and rational in the same way…I understand now that that is not our affair. If I had been truly wise and honest twenty years ago I would have eloped from here with Lajos, my sister’s fiancé, Lajos the swindler, the notorious liar, that piece of human garbage, as Nunu would put it since she likes to express herself forcefully. That is what I should have done had I been brave and wise and honest twenty years back…What would my fate have been? I don’t know. I doubt it would have been particularly pleasant or cheerful. But at least I would have obeyed a law and fulfilled an obligation that is stronger than the laws of reason and the world generally…Do you understand now? Because I have come to understand…I have understood it to the point that I am giving Lajos and Éva the house because it is what I owe them…And then…what will be will be.”
“You are going to leave?” he quietly asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “I haven’t worked out what should happen to me yet. In any case I ask you to give Lajos this piece of paper—yes, I have signed it—and I want you, Endre, to add a tough and binding codicil to ensure that the pitiful amount remaining to Nunu should not fall into Lajos’s hands. Do you promise?”
He made no answer to my question. He picked up the contract between two fingers, as if it were a dirty, suspicious object.
“Yes, all right,” he sighed. “Of course, I knew nothing of this.”
I caught his hand but immediately let it go.
“Forgive me,” I said, “but no one in twenty years has asked me about it. Not you, not Tibor…Maybe I myself was less certain, Endre, was less so bitterly certain that Lajos was right in saying that there is a kind of invisible order in life and that what one has begun one has also to end…As and when…Well, now that’s done with,” I said, and stood up.
“Yes,” he said, the sheet in his hand, his head bowed. “It is probably superfluous to say it, but should you regret this…either now or in the future…we are always here, Tibor and I.”
“It is indeed superfluous,” I said, and tried to smile.
20
About midnight I heard Nunu’s footsteps; she climbed slowly up the creaking, rotted wooden stairs, pausing on every third step to cough. She stopped on the threshold of my room just as she had last night, the flickering candle in her hand, wearing her day clothes, the solitary black ceremonial dress she had not yet had time to take off.
“You’re not asleep,” she said, and sat down beside me on the bed, placing what remained of the candle on the bedside table.
“You know they have even taken the jam?”
“No,” I said. I sat up in the bed and started laughing.
“Not everything, just the peach,” she said in a ma
tter-of-fact way. “All twenty jars. Éva asked for them. They took the flowers, too, the remaining dahlias in the garden. It doesn’t matter. They would have faded by next week anyway.”
“Who took the flowers?” I asked.
“The woman.”
She coughed, folded her arms, and sat up straight, as calm and self-contained as ever in life, whatever the situation. I took her bony hand that was neither warm nor cold.
“Let them take what they want, Nunu,” I said.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Let them take it, my girl. If there’s no alternative.”
“I couldn’t go down to supper,” I said, and squeezed her hand for support. “Don’t be cross. Were they not surprised?”
“No, they were simply quiet. I don’t think they were surprised.”